Melanie Pinola

If you want the juiciest, most flavorful steak you can cook, look for plenty of fat throughout the meat. Serious Eats' guide to grilling steak says marbling is a more important quality to look for than just the grade of the beef (Prime, Choice, or Select).

Why is this? Well, that marbling is responsible for both moisture and that beefy flavor:

As well-marbled meat cooks, the fat will slowly melt, adding juiciness built right into the meat. Non-marbled meat might have plenty of fat on the exterior, but it doesn't enhance the steak in the same way. Sort of like the difference between drinking a glass of chocolate milk or drinking the milk then shooting the chocolate syrup.

Flavorwise, almost all of the compounds our tongues sense that give us the thought "ooh, that's beefy" are found in the fat. In fact, if you take the fat out of a piece of beef and replace it with lamb fat, it'll taste like lamb. Want chicken-flavored beef? Cook lean beef in chicken fat.